


Butterfly Hunting

by cobweb_diamond



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobweb_diamond/pseuds/cobweb_diamond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how the saviour of Earth, and of several galaxies, kingdoms, empires and trade conglomerates, the Oncoming Storm, Theta Sigma, the Last of the Time Lords and occasional visiting lecturer at the Geological Academy of Throm, came face-to-face with the currently eight-year-old Boy Who Lived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterfly Hunting

The glow-in-the-dark clock in the Dursleys’ kitchen showed three o’clock in the morning when Harry heard the noises in the living room and went to investigate, a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich still clutched in one hand. When he got there he found a strange blue light and a lot of whispered conversation taking place, all of it emanating from three grown-ups who seemed to have stepped directly out of Aunt Petunia’s linen cupboard.

‘Hello?’ said Harry, and immediately felt rather silly for doing so.

They turned around very fast, all looking even more surprised than he was, as if it were an enormous shock to find someone else in the room. It was almost as if they’d got lost rather than having broken into the house.

‘Hello!’ said the tallest of the three grown-ups. He was dressed a little bit like Mr Dursley, who liked to wear bow ties and tweed quite a lot, even during warm weather when he’d get sweat stains under his jackets. Somehow this man looked a lot nicer than Mr Dursley, though, not that that was very difficult. Mr Dursley resembled an angry walrus. ‘Are we in your house!’

‘Er, yes,’ said Harry. ‘Why did you break in?’

The other two, a red-haired lady and a nervous-looking young man with a giant butterfly net clutched in one hand exchanged a glance. ‘We didn’t break in -- exactly,’ said the woman.

‘We don’t break things unless we’re running away from something, and that's usually only by accident,’ said the man with the bow tie. ‘And right now we’re running towards something.’

‘Moths?’ Harry guessed.

‘What?’ said the man with the net.

‘I thought that blue light thing might be to attract them without burning them?’ Harry theorised. ‘And then you catch them, like butterflies.’

‘Yes,’ said the girl firmly. ‘Very big, rare... moths. We just got so carried-away chasing the moth we... ended up in your cupboard?’

While the other two were attempting to persuade Harry that they were perfectly trustworthy and there was no need to call the police (an option that Harry hadn’t even considered until it was brought up), the man with the bow tie was pointing his blue torch around and muttering to himself. He reminded Harry of a woman who’d come up to him in Sainsburys a couple of weeks ago, and used a long wooden stick to tap all the tangerines in the Dursleys’ shopping trolley -- which Harry had been pushing, as per usual -- until they grew to the size of watermelons. He'd had to sneak them all out of the trolley before Mrs Dursley noticed, and then she'd got angry with him for "losing" them. 

‘My uncle and aunt’ll call the police if they find you in here,’ said Harry. ‘You’d probably better leave.’

‘Through the back door!’ said the bow-tie man, wheeling around to point his blue light right in Harry’s face and making him blink. ‘I’m the Doctor, by the way, pleased to meet you.’

* * *

**Earlier**

First they’d landed in a field, which Rory and Amy had objected to so strenuously that the Doctor had agreed to park the TARDIS closer to their target hotspot just to make them shut up. Honestly, you’d think an English nurse and a Scot would by necessity have fewer objections to rain.

But even here was proving to be a problem, because the TARDIS had landed herself slap-bang in the middle of a house, and for some reason the screwdriver’s readings were suddenly all over the place.

‘Surrey?’ Rory was whispering as Amy tried to pick the lock manually and the Doctor faffed around with his screwdriver. ‘ _Surrey?_ It’s practically the middle of nowhere! Nothing ever happens in Surrey! We’re in a suburb of a suburb!’

‘Nonsense! Practically _everything_ exciting happens in the middle of nowhere,’ said the Doctor cheerfully, as the door finally clicked open. They stepped out into a chintzy living-room that housed an unenticing combination of robot-based toys, and pastel-coloured decorative crochet-work.

‘Yeah, what about all those deserted vampire-castles, eh, Rory?’ said Amy, as Rory dragged their airfishing net out of the TARDIS and into the house. ‘And that island with the sentient coral? And the acid-pumping station? And Leadworth?’

‘All right, all right,’ said Rory. ‘Fine, the middle of nowhere is a perfectly --’

At which point their not-so-whispered bickering was cut off by a small voice from the doorway saying, ‘Hello?’ And so the saviour of Earth, and of several galaxies, kingdoms, empires and trade conglomerates, the Oncoming Storm, Theta Sigma, the Last of the Time Lords and occasional visiting lecturer at the Geological Academy of Throm, came face-to-face with the currently eight-year-old Boy Who Lived.

* * *

‘I’m the Doctor, by the way. Pleased to meet you,’ he said, and tossed his screwdriver up in the air so it landed safely in his top front pocket, freeing up a hand for shaking.

The Doctor peered down into the little boy’s pale face. The boy reminded him of a young Amelia Pond, just a little bit. Unruffled. The Doctor liked Unruffled, especially in children. He could never be having with people who shrieked and ran around like headless chickens at the slightest bit of excitement.

‘I’m Harry,’ said the boy, politely wiping bits of peanut-butter sandwich off his hand before taking the Doctor’s to shake. The Doctor clasped it with some enthusiasm, clearly unbothered by any lingering crumbs. Peering closer, he spied a thin scar across Harry’s forehead, and started back.

‘Harry Potter! _Harry Potter!_ My goodness!’

Harry edged away, suddenly wary. ‘I don’t know you, do I? You don’t know my aunt and uncle, either, right?’

‘Do we seem like we’re friends of your aunt and uncle?’

Harry seemed unsure about this, as if he’d allowed adults to trick him into similar conversational traps in the past, and was unwilling to repeat the experience. ‘Sometimes people know my name, even if I’ve never met them before,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Strangers. Usually they’re a bit, er... odd,’ he added, possibly deciding that even though Amy, Rory and the Doctor were all grown-ups, he still had the upper hand what with having caught them skulking around the house in the middle of the night.

‘A bit odd?’ exclaimed the Doctor, causing the Harry to shrink back a little. ‘A bit odd? I’ll have you know that I am never anything less than extremely odd. Extraordinarily odd. Extra... extra...’

‘Extraterrestrially?’ supplied Amy.

‘Yes. Exactly. Now, you don’t mind if we just pop through your house to the back garden, do you? Without waking any aunts or uncles or similar people that might have some problem with us climbing over the bin shed at three o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday in the middle of -- ‘

‘Nowhere?’ Rory suggested, and Amy grinned.

‘You’re not secretly burglars, are you?’ asked Harry, not looking particularly bothered about which way the answer would go. ‘If you are, most of the computers and tellies and stuff are in my cousin’s second bedroom upstairs. But a lot of them’re broken already so you might not be able to sell them. I s’pose you’re not from around here, though -- nobody has any second-hand stuff here. Except me,’ he added, as an afterthought.

‘A recycler!’ said the Doctor. ‘Splendid! You know, many great and famous humans have been known for their interest in recycling --’

But Rory was tugging on the Doctor’s arm. ‘Shouldn’t we be, you know, going?’ he said, with some urgency. ‘What with the bin sheds and the sonic whatsit and the... ‘ He glanced down at Harry. ‘The... moths?’

‘Ah, yes.’ He shot Harry an apologetic look. ‘It’s a pity you can’t come with us,’ he said, to the general exasperation of both Amy and Rory. Like most adult humans, they’d begun objecting to the idea of children being taken on adventures almost as soon as they’d stopped being children themselves. ‘But we really ought to be on our way. Which way’s the garden?’

Harry gave directions, including the squeaky floorboard under the linoleum in the kitchen, and for a moment was almost sad that he _couldn’t_ go away with these three strangers. Whether they were burglars or really were giant moth-hunters, they’d undoubtedly be far, far more entertaining than anything that ever happened at Number Four, Privet Drive. But even a boy as adventurous as Harry knew that you couldn’t run away from home at the age of eight. You just couldn’t.

Once the Doctor and his friends had gone, Harry stood for a while in the dark of the living-room before beginning to tidy up all the things Rory had knocked over with his nets. The blue light outside had already vanished over the top of Mrs Brunswick’s raspberry patch and only now was Harry able to think of the hundred or so questions he should have asked the Doctor before they’d left. Eventually, though, he heard a sleepy noise from upstairs and decided it’d be best to go back to his cupboard. Stomach full of peanut-butter sandwiches and brain full of mysterious strangers and giant night-moths, he drifted back off to sleep and awoke the next morning to the sound of Petunia shrieking over the phone to one of her neighbours who’d found her entire lawn and front porch burnt to a crisp in the night.

* * *

The Doctor, as he often did, was talking to himself.

‘Of course, he was magical to begin with, but sleeping the cupboard under the stairs!’ he said, fiddling with the sonic and pointing it this way and that, effectively destroying Amy and Rory’s night vision every time they turned around. ‘Honestly! It’s like raising a child under the bed, or in a hollow tree-trunk at the bottom of the garden, or at a crossroads. They’re practically bound to turn out all magical. All those pocket-dimensions lurking out of the corner of your eye and childhood fear receptors buzzing around, looking for dark corners to hide in, it’s no wonder he grew up to fight monsters... he’d probably been doing it since before he could walk, without even knowing it.’

‘I’m sorry, Doctor, did you say _magical_?’

‘Oh, yes! That boy you just met was the best magician of your generation. Born 1980, dies... well, it’s probably best you don’t know that. Spoilers. But yes, he’s terribly, terribly magical, that little boy. Saves the world several times when he’s a bit older. Or he saves Great Britain at least -- wizards are awfully insular like that.’

‘And... he sleeps in the cupboard under the stairs? Because it’s magical?’ asks Amy, glancing back. ‘What, is that like hot-housing for... wizards?’

The Doctor’s face turned sad for a moment. ‘No. Nothing like that. But his aunt and uncle keep him in that cupboard until he’s eleven, I think. They don’t get much of a place in the history books, but from what I gather they aren’t very nice people.’

‘And you can’t... get him out?’

The Doctor shakes his head. ‘Fixed point in time. Too much history here. I’m not surprised our visitors decided to land in Little Whinging -- this place is a great big weight on the rubber sheet of the space-time continuum and no mistake. In a few years, Harry -- Oh!’ At last, the sonic screwdriver had decided to behave itself again, making excited buzzing noises in the direction of a rhododendron bush. ‘They’re burrowing just over there! Everyone got their orange juice? Nets at the ready? Shoelaces tied?’

Amy and Rory both produced their orange-juice water-pistols, Rory twirling his on one finger and nearly dropping it.

‘Excellent!’ In the bushes up ahead, something big, or else a mass of lots and lots of little somethings moving together, was edging towards them. ‘Ready to run for your lives?’ added the Doctor, apparently as an afterthought.

‘Are we ever,’ said Rory, and soon enough they were doing just that.


End file.
